


Shattered Mirror

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Angel: the Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-06
Updated: 2010-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike meets himself from another life. Written for Round One, Challenge Nine of Last Author Standing: Jossverse</p><p>Final Challenge. Round Winner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattered Mirror

L.A. shuttered and shook under the worn out soles of his shoes. Shredded, mutilated and belching smoke, it had at last become his city. He had always had a fondness for broken things. Crouching down in the middle of what had once been a busy street, he shifted through the remains of a jewelry display case. Idly, he pocketed diamonds and other precious bits that could later be pawned for passage. There was always someone that had lingered to long, hovering on the edges of their shattered lives or taken in by a pretty face that turned ugly in the privacy of their homes. One at a time, he and Illyria passed them along to whatever freedom awaited outside the devastated city.

“Excuse me.” A smokey voice floated from over his shoulder along with a dark musky scent. “Are you William Pratt?”

He had a hand around the man’s throat before he saw his face. An all too familiar face.

“Who the fuck are you then?”

“Call me Knives. It makes things simpler.” The doppleganger didn’t squirm or fight. He was still as a gargoyle.

“What are you?” Spike accused, backing him up against the wall.

“A Walker. Why do you call out to me with such pain?”

“I didn’t call anyone.”

“I walk between the worlds.” Knives held up his hands. Intricately patterned scars laced over his palms. “I am not in the habit of meeting my other selves, but I heard you, so clearly.”

“Must’ve been bad reception. Just going about my day.” Spike narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you meant to get the git in the World without Shrimp.”

“You live in a city that screams like a raw wound. You move alone like a scavenger. Why?”

“Why do you do whatever you do?” Spike shrugged loosely. “Seems like the best place. Spot of fun, spot of help.”

“Come, let me look at you.” One scarred hand beckoned. “Put your hand in mine.”

“Fuck off.”

“Obstinate always.” Knives lips parted in a parody of a smile, each tooth was filed to a sharp point.

The scarred hands lunged, grabbed Spike’s face in a blur of movement he couldn’t follow. The thumbs pressed up over his eyes until sparks showered his vision.

Scenes of his life unspooled at nauseating speeds. His brief sad breathing life and then onwards through two centuries of death, tortured and love, spilling out like vomit. And after that...still more. New memories. Countless lives.

Flash. The stars stretch out before him. His first mate with a familiar hangdog brow leaned into his side pointing with the curl of a smile on his lips.

Flash. He runs through the woods, his pack close kept connected by baying howls. He finds a deer, catching it beneath his teeth. The spill of hot blood a familiar pleasure, the sharing of it making it all the sweeter.

Flash. Laughing in the sunlight. Drusilla smiles sweetly littering his face with kisses, tugging on his sweatshirt and leading him to a blanket spread on the grass. Her heartbeat fills his ears when he rests his head on her chest.

Flash. Flesh splits under the line of his sword as they press through the brawl. A young man, blond and laughing leads the way and in any form he knows that expression. Buffy skewers someone neatly on the blade and leads the way through an open door into streets that run with blood. He takes the outreached hand and they fight arm and arm.

Flash. His lover lies dead at his feet. In a thousand forms, a thousand lifetimes. In most he takes his own life, in some he lives to love again and in a few pathetic lifetimes he wanders alone. Man, beast, demon and god they wander their landscapes with bleeding wounds.

Flash. This Walker who can move and use unimaginable power for-

The hands drop away, but Spike could be fast beyond reckoning as well. He grabbed the retreating wrist.

“Use it for what?” He spat. “What do you want from me?”

“Find someone. Anyone.” Knives did not move to take his hand away even as the bones of his wrist ground together. “We cannot live in such pain. And as long as you feel it, so do I.”

“Sad story.” Spike released his grasp. “Don’t really care much bout your pain though, precious.”

“You should.” Knives grimaced. “It’s yours and mine and yours...”

“Thought you said this was all alternate universe shit.” Spike turned his back to shift through the last of the broken glass. “Not to mention you got that nifty heartbeat.”

“How long do you think you can live?” Knives knelt beside him, reaching into the glass to pull out a diamond. “Until mankind is dust? You could. I did. You could watch them unravel, over centuries. Alone. And in the end, when you are more like this stone than a man, you can become me.”

“See that’s where you got it wrong, mate. I ain’t alone.”

A shadow detached from the darkness.

“Is this thing bothering you?” Illyria purred. “Can I kill it?”

“Leave it be, pet. Just a fragment of a shattered mirror.”

“She’s not what you need.” Knives sighed. “This path ends in madness for you.”

“See thing is, luv. If you were me, you’d know that I don’t like anyone else tellin’ me my business.”

Spike could feel the heavy gaze at his back until the dense air of the city swallowed them both whole.


End file.
